Invited Doubters who Incite Caricatures,

Books are written with the intention that they be read all the way through and I like to respect the author’s wish, especially when the author is someone of the calibre of Joseph Heller, writer of Catch-22 (my favourite book). It was with regret that I decided to abandon Portrait of the Artist, as an Old Man after 50 pages.

Drawing on his own experience, in a self-deprecating style, Heller tries to explain the feelings and tell the tale of Eugene Pota, an author who is celebrated for one book in his early career, in the final stages of his life as he struggles to write something to recapture the glory the literary press had previously bestowed upon him.

This book was released posthumously and indeed, it does seem very intellectual, in fact it verges upon being pretentious, and it is riddled with smart ironies but I felt it was missing something to make it readable. The book seemed more like a collection of ideas; indeed, a clever metaphor for Pota’s own struggle to cobble his thoughts together into a novel, but this seemed to hamper the development of a plot. I think this would be a great book to analyse as a student of English and it is indeed a brilliant piece of work but I don’t think it’s accessible to someone hoping for a leisurely read. I’d have liked to study English but it was too much of a risk, sooner or later, someone would have demanded that I look at some more dross by Shakespeare. Shakespeare was a nincompoop.

I’ve always enjoyed Joseph Heller’s books, Catch-22 is legendary, the same wit that is evident in Something Happened and Closing Time, the sequel to Catch-22, is a delight. Some day I will return to Portrait of the Artist, as an Old Man, I don’t really believe that Joseph Heller could have written a poor novel.